7332

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7332
• Author: Valdez, R. A., et al.
• Title: Final Report Habitat Suitability Index Curves for Endangered Fishes of the Upper Colorado River Basin.
• USFW Year: 1987.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

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TASK A: DATABASE ASSIMILATION

TASK OBJECTIVES

The purpose of Task A was to assimilate the database, and summarize and
document the component data sets. The specific objectives of Task A were to:

1. Assimilate the data provided by FWS.

2. Develop a concise summary of each data set, including study documen-
tation.

3. Provide summary tables of the endangered fish and associated habitat
information from the assimilated data.

4. Locate and summarize available documentation for HSI curves
developed in previous studies.

DATABASE ASSIMILATION

Methods

The database used in this project was provided to BIOjWEST by FWS. It is
referred to as FWS/DATABASE and consists of about 100,000 records or lines of
information. It was transferred by FWS as data assimilated by that agency, and
as data assimilated by the Colorado Water Congress (ewC). The FWS data were on
floppy disks containing about 40 computerized datafiles. These files were in a
variety of formats containing a total of about 40,000 records, representing
collections of FWS, CDOW, and UDWR from 1979-1986. Some documentation of these
datafiles was provided by FWS in the form of report exerpts and code descrip-
tions. The ewc data were transferred to BIOjWEST on a magnetic tape as a
database called ewCjDATABASE (Valdez 1985b). FWS received permission from ewc
to use the database, which contains about 70,000 common- format records with
accompanying documentation, and represents data from 1964-1984. CWC/DATABASE
contains the 'historic' quantitative habitat data collected by Universities,
Federal and State Agencies, and private groups, on the endangered fishes of the
UCRB. Since these two databases overlapped for the period 1979-1984, data used
for this curve development project were the FWS data instead of those stored in
CWCjDATABASE, because of possible updates by that agency. Thus, data prior to
1979 were taken from CWCjDATABASE, and the rest were taken from that
assimilated by FWS.

When the datafiles were received by BIOjWEST, they were checked for
consistency of fieldnames and codes, and related to a documented study. Most
of the FWS data were provided in dBASE III+ format, and most contained only
information on the three target species. Collectors of the data were
contacted, whenever possible, and data discrepancies and errors were identified
and corrected. The volume and complexity of data in FWSjDATABASE precluded
creating a single master database in a common format. Thus, only the rare fish
data were entered into a single working database wi th a common format. This
working database contained about 8,100 records. Examples of data provided by

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